EDITORIAL: The VA must do better

Published: Thursday, June 6, 2013 at 04:16 PM.

Certainly it will be left to future generations and history to debate the reasons and the justifications for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But there should be no disagreement over the debt we owe to the men and women who served in those wars and fought for this nation. Now, this nation must fight for them by fulfilling our promise to stand by those who have stood up for us.

The VA must do better. When we think of our military services, we think of certain ideals: teamwork, discipline, sacrifice, putting nation before self. Those ideals need to applied by the VA administration in resolving the horrendous backlog in disability claims.

Because failure to do so not only is a disservice to our returning veterans but is blatant disrespect for those who defend us. And that is intolerable.

Last week our nation paused on Memorial Day to salute those who have died defending America and her principles.

We wonder what the men and women honored on that day would think of the treatment the nation’s newest veterans are receiving from their government.

We speak of the backlog of Veterans Administration disability claims that has become a crisis and a national outrage. While the VA and its leadership, the latest being Secretary Eric Shinseki, have repeatedly pledged to speed up the process and remove the backlog, the reality is the average wait for first-time disability claims to be processed is now more than 300 days, and according to a letter recently sent to President Barack Obama by 67 U.S. senators, some veterans “continue to wait 800 days, 900 days and even more than 1,000 days for a disability claims decision from the VA.”

This is not just unacceptable, it is outrageous. It is not an easy problem to fix, obviously. Shinseki has vowed to have all claims processed within 125 days by 2015. The VA is requiring more than 10,000 of its workers put in 20 hours of overtime a month to try and whittle away at the backlog of claims.

With an estimated 875,000 veterans on waiting lists for disability claims, it is a monumental challenge — yet, a challenge that must be conquered.

The problems contributing to the backlog are clear. The Afghanistan and Iraq wars were two of our nation’s longest, and many of the service men and women who served in those wars were deployed multiple times. Moreover, improved trauma care saved 95 percent of the wounded. There is also a higher awareness of so-called “invisible wounds,” which has contributed to an unprecedented demand for post-service assistance. One-third of the troops who are coming back from our two latest wars have been diagnosed with mental health issues.

A Harvard University report indicates that one of every two veterans from Afghanistan or Iraq has applied for permanent disability benefits, undoubtedly higher than any previous wars our nation has fought.

Certainly it will be left to future generations and history to debate the reasons and the justifications for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But there should be no disagreement over the debt we owe to the men and women who served in those wars and fought for this nation. Now, this nation must fight for them by fulfilling our promise to stand by those who have stood up for us.

The VA must do better. When we think of our military services, we think of certain ideals: teamwork, discipline, sacrifice, putting nation before self. Those ideals need to applied by the VA administration in resolving the horrendous backlog in disability claims.

Because failure to do so not only is a disservice to our returning veterans but is blatant disrespect for those who defend us. And that is intolerable.